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Brexit would cost Britons a month's salary by 2020: OECD report

Wed, Apr 27, 2016 - 2:53 PM

Britain leaving the European Union after a June 23 referendum would lead to the average working Briton losing the equivalent of a month's salary by 2020, according to an OECD report due out later on Wednesday, cited by BBC radio.

PHOTO: AFP

[LONDON] Britain leaving the European Union after a June 23 referendum would lead to the average working Briton losing the equivalent of a month's salary by 2020, according to an OECD report due out later on Wednesday, cited by BBC radio.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told the broadcaster in an interview it would be a bad decision to leave the 28-member bloc.

"We made a whole series of calculations and we came out saying Brexit is a tax ... It's equivalent to roughly missing on one month's income within four years and then it carries on ... and there's a consistent loss,"

Mr Gurria said, "The whole idea here is we have done the comparisons, we have done the simulations, we have gone through the different ways in which this will happen. In the end we come out and say why are we spending so much time, so much effort and so much talent in trying to find ways to compensate for a bad decision where you don't necessarily have to take the bad decision."